A genre in manga and anime where a single (often ordinary) guy is liked and followed by bunch of girls (3 or more) who are all madly in love with him. The girls often fight each other to get the guy's attention.

In Turkey, Persia, and other areas of the Middle East, the harem was a section of a palace where the women of the palace lived. Contrary to popular belief, the harem was not a brothel; that's simply a Western viewpoint. The harem did house the wives (and sometimes concubines) of the Shah, but his female relatives also lived there.

Still, there are many cases where a group of females linked sexually to one male (or males linked to one female) is referred to as a harem.

Sure, the harem is associated with polygamous sexual relations, but not all of them are based on sex: a woman with a large group of gay male friends could refer to them as her "harem".

Harem (Turkish, from Arabic حرم ḥaram 'forbidden place; sacrosanct, sanctum', related to حريم ḥarīm 'a sacred inviolable place; female members of the family' and حرام ḥarām, 'forbidden; sacred') refers to the sphere of women in a usually polygynous household and their quarters which is enclosed and forbidden to men. It originated in the Near East and came to the Western world via the Ottoman Empire.

The term serraglio (Italian from Persian sarāy "palace, enclosed courts") carries a similar meaning.

In modern colloquial (and humorous) English, "harem" may denote a number of female followers of a charismatic man.

The 'harem' does not refer to a sanctuary for the wives of a polygynous person. It is simply a resting quarters for women. Female seclusion in Islam is emphasized to the extent that any unlawful breaking into that privacy is ḥarām "forbidden". Contrary to the common belief, a Muslimharem does not necessarily consist solely of women with whom the head of the household has sexual relations (wives and concubines), but also their young offspring, other female relatives, etc.; and it may either be a palatial complex, as in Romantic tales, in which case it includes staff (women and eunuchs), or simply their quarters, in the Ottoman tradition separated from the men's selamlık. The Greek gynaeceum and Persian zenana were comparable institutions.

A genre of anime or manga where the main character is surrounded by multiple characters of the opposite sex. Can often be a yaoi or yuri. A standard harem involves one male character and multiple female characters. If the main character is female it is referred to as a reverse harem.